


A Little Unlikely

by phaetonschariot



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s01e04 Cyberwoman, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-03 23:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phaetonschariot/pseuds/phaetonschariot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A G-rated romance in three parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Unlikely

**Author's Note:**

> Because I was watching Turn Left, of all things, when I realised that Ianto/Jenny would be _the cutest thing ever_ , and then I put angst in it.

1\. And Then They Met

The first time Ianto sees Jenny she's running. Later, he comes to realise that this is a common state of affairs, but right at this point in time he's walking home from a meeting with Jack, wondering how he's going to spend the last week of his suspension, and eating the last two bites of a blueberry muffin. A blonde girl with her hair in a ponytail runs straight past him, flat out. He wondera what she's doing for a moment, then goes back to trying to decide if he feels like putting a CD on when he gets back to his flat.

It's surprising how easy it is to get out of the habit of assuming that people don't run in Cardiff for any normal reasons. A moment later, though, the girl turns and races back toward him, flashing him a wide smile. "Excuse me, where's the nearest body of water?"

"Er," Ianto says, and points down towards the bay.

"Thanks!" The smile becomes a grin before she dashes off again. This time Ianto turns to look after her, glances back the way she came, and watches as a man, now, runs past him in pursuit. There's something that feels _off_ about him, even with the short exposure Ianto had to him.

It only takes a moment's consideration before he's tossing the muffin wrapper in a bit and breaking into a run after the pair.

He reaches the bay in time to see the blonde girl scramble under a rope railing and jump right into the water. The strange man has managed to close the distance between them and follows her unhesitatingly, leaping over the rope and crashing into the bay with a large splash that drenches several feet of pavement.

Ianto's wearing jeans and a shirt rather than his usual suits, but he still has no desire to take an impromptu swim, particularly when he has no idea quite what's going on. Instead he slows, coming to a walk and leaning over one of the railing posts. He's not sure what he expects to see.

Ripples still mar the surface at counterpoint to the soft waves. Incongruously, something thick and purple is rising to the circle in shining globules, like oil or petrol. A moment later the girl breaks the surface with a gasp, hair soaked and plastered to her face, mascara just _slightly_ running. "Hello!"

"Do you need a hand?" 

The girl wipes water from her face, leaving a smear of purple across one cheek, and half-swims, half-paddles the few feet back to the edge of the bay. Between them they manage to get her out of the water and she collapses in a laughing, sodding heap on the ground, rolling onto her back and giggling up at him.

Ianto can't help but think about what kind of grime is on the ground there. "You're getting dirty," he points out.

"I don't think it matters at this point! Though..." She sits up, grimacing at her clothes - which are clinging quite dramatically to her, now - and the purple ichor that Ianto thinks must be what is left of the strange man that was chasing her. "I don't suppose you live nearby? I could _really_ use a shower."

Only for a second or two, and only because of her matter-of-fact confidence, does Ianto think this request is normal. Then he blinks, realising how small she is compared to him, and even though he doesn't have his gun (handed in to the Captain, to be given back on his return to work), he's got to be stronger than her. "Do you really think trusting strange men on the street is safe?" 

When she stands, she's shorter than him by three or four inches. "Are you going to attack me?" she asks, meeting his gaze directly, fearlessly.

"No. But I don't think I'd tell you if I was."

That makes her laugh again, but it's shorter this time, an honest laugh rather than the giddy, adrenalin-fueled hysteria of before. "I could beat you off anyway," she tells him, and her conviction is almost enough to make him believe it. "Come on."

 

2\. Bowling Over

To be quite honest, Ianto doesn't have a clue what he's doing. It's only a few blocks from the bay to his flat and they hadn't talked much on the way except to introduce themselves - the blonde girl turned out to be a Jenny, and she'd spent most of the walk trying to wring out her t-shirt and hair, leaving intermittent splashes of dirty water on the pavement. Now, the muted rush of his shower fills the background quiet as he puts her clothes straight into the dryer and hesitates over what to offer her to wear in the meantime. He has some of Lisa's clothes here - they'd be a bit big on her, probably, but better than a towel toga. Except that it feels too wrong. It's less practical, but somehow easier, to pull out one of his own shirts and a pair of trousers, with a belt she can cinch tight to accommodate her smaller frame.

With someone else here the silence seems strange and stifling, so he flicks the radio onto something boppy and modern as he heads into the kitchen to put the coffee on. It's dripping into the pot when the phone rings, and he knows without even looking at the caller ID that it's Jack. He's done this a few times over the last three weeks - finding some excuse to check up on him. God knows there's no one else who'd call.

"Yeah?"

"Ianto." Jack's voice, as he'd predicted. "Did I leave my sunglasses on the table?"

Ianto rolls his eyes a little, leaning back against the bench and glancing out the window. It's warmish, but clouded over, and no stagnant water on the roads from recent rainfall for what sunlight there _is_ to reflect off of. "You weren't wearing them."

"Oh. Right. Must be somewhere in the Hub, then. Everything alright?"

"Fine," he replies automatically, half-absently, listening as the shower turns off and it's just synthesised pop on low volume now. 

There's a brief pause. "Alright. See you."

He hangs up, waits a bit, and a few moments later Jenny comes out in his clothes, still damp, but a more comfortable sort of damp now. Freshly showered rather than drowned rat, and the purple seems to have washed away easily enough. "So," she says, "are you going to ask me about the thing that was following me?"

Perhaps he's been in Torchwood too long, Ianto realises, because it actually surprises him to remember that most people would be a lot more curious about that. All he says, though, is, "It wasn't a species I recognised, but you seemed to have it in hand."

"You know about aliens?" Jenny seems pleased about this. She rounds the breakfast bar and hoists herself up to sit on it. Ianto doesn't really feel the need to object. She already seems more at home in his flat than he does. "I thought Earth didn't make first contact for a while yet."

"Which first contact?" he asked, tone darkly humorous - though perhaps a little more dark than humorous. "We've had dozens. People will ignore anything."

"But not you?"

He shrugs, looking at her, then turns away to pour the coffee. "You talk about Earth like you're from somewhere else. Or somewhen else." Temporal anomalies didn't seem to be as common as spacial ones, but Torchwood had them on record anyway. And of course there were other races logged that seemed to have limited time travel capabilities - or not so limited, in the case of the Doctor, though naturally that was largely speculation. 

"You're not prejudiced, are you?" she teases, accepting the mug he holds out to her and taking a drink. "Oh, this is gorgeous. What is it?"

The question, so unexpected, actually makes him laugh, though it's a short sound that sounds foreign in his own hearing. "Now I know you're not from around here. It's coffee. Caffeinated hot beverage, made from beans."

She gives him a sly, playful look over the rim of the mug as she sips at it again, clearly enjoying her own first contact with the joys of Earth cuisine. "Only just got here, actually," she confides. "Following that thing. I don't know what it was either, but it was mean and stupid and didn't seem to like being splashed. So tell me, Ianto Jones, how do you know so much about aliens?"

He gazes at her speculatively for a long moment, thinking. He's only just met her, doesn't have a clue where she's from or what she is, except that she looks human enough. At Torchwood One, breaking the secrecy agreements was punished severely. Three seems more lax, but considering he's on suspension for almost destroying the world, he's not exactly sure where he stands on fraternising with strange non-Earth based lifeforms, no matter how friendly and blonde they happen to be.

On the other hand, he doesn't entirely give a damn about Torchwood right now, and this is about the first time he's actually felt interested in something for weeks. "I work for a secret government agency created to protect the planet from hostile alien invasions," he tells her, blasé as though this is a perfectly normal conversation to be having in his kitchen over coffee. "Which isn't really as impressive as it sounds."

"Isn't it? Why not?"

"Mostly I just make the drinks and do the tedious jobs like cleaning and researching while my coworkers protect the planet. Though they cause about as many problems as they don't. And I'm suspended at the moment, anyway. I made... a rather bad judgement call." Put like that it sounds underwhelming, as though he'd mixed ammonia and bleach while distracted, but he can't think of a better explanation that doesn't actually require him to explain.

Jenny considers this. "It is a very good drink, though."

"If that was all that mattered I'd work in a café."

"You could come with me. I'm still getting the hang of this adventure thing, we could learn together!"

The invitation sounds absolutely genuine, and he stares at her for a moment, wondering where she's from that she seems to find nothing abnormal about attaching herself to complete strangers and acting as though they're best friends. She seems utterly at ease, as though she doesn't have a self-doubting or conflicted bone in her body. Ianto's envious. "I don't know anything about you," he points out.

Jenny grins at him and kicks her legs against the cabinets below her. "Neither do I! We can get to know each other on the way. Isn't that what adventures are for?"

He's mad, he must be, completely mad, because there's no other explanation for why he would be even considering making her a counter-offer. "Stay here for a few days," he suggests though, and yes, he's completely barking. "I'm not going back to work for a week. We can decide before then."

 

3\. Generated Anomalies

There's something about Jenny that seems a little unreal. It might be that she's leaving in a few days, one way or the other, so telling her things doesn't seem to have the same gravity as telling a regular therapist or a friend or coworker. Or maybe that something about her reminds him of Jack, except without the disconcerting something under all the charm or all the history between them. Just the way she's too friendly, too sweet, too everything, and it feels as though she fills the entire flat while he's fading into the walls. Despite this he likes her. He can't help it.

He tells her about Torchwood One and the ghost shifts. She tells him about the seven day war. He sees her first moment of insecurity when he repeats, "The Doctor," in a thick voice, and then he has to explain about how utterly _legendary_ the Doctor is, and how Torchwood One wanted to capture him and he isn't sure what Torchwood Three wants. For her to be sort-of-cloned from him... well, he'd _definitely_ be in trouble for keeping her a secret if he still worked for One. 

"But you won't let them lock me up, will you?" she asks, and he replies, "No," immediately and without hesitation. Her eyes hadn't exactly been vulnerable before his answer, but they still clear up afterwards and she flashes him that smile again, the one that's completely natural and unaffected.

What was he thinking? She's nothing like Jack.

On Thursday he's walking to the coffee shop where he's been meeting with Jack and it occurs to him that there's a girl living in his flat who's only months old. He can only imagine what Owen would have to say about that. The thought makes him laugh.

Jack comments on his improved mood over drinks (which Ianto no longer worries are going to be a cover for retcon) and all he can think of to say is, "Must be the sunshine." It is the first clear day for a while, but still Jack looks far too knowing as he accepts the answer, as though he knows Ianto really means he's getting over what happened. He is, maybe, but not for the reasons Jack thinks. 

He listens to a few stories from work with some interest but no hunger. When he stands to go, Jack tells him, "Eight o'clock, Monday morning."

Ianto nods and smiles and walks back to his flat thinking that he's developing a bad habit of hiding women-of-interest from Torchwood. Whether that's Torchwood's interest or his interest is open to interpretation, really.

When he gets back he discovers that Jenny has figured out how to fry eggs in his kitchen, as well as washed up after herself. They eat them as a mid-afternoon snack and he wonders if she's doubly in danger of clogging her arteries from the salt she liberally covers hers with. "They want you back at work?" she asks, licking yolk from her fingers.

"Monday morning."

"Come with me instead," she says, and kisses him.

_[Post-it: exploring space & time with the Doctor's daughter. consider this my notice. IJ.]_


End file.
